Jim Ingraham: Indians must act during their two-year window of opportunity

Take the Indians' $49 million payroll this year. Double it. Now add $7 million more. That gets you to where the Tigers are at $105 million -- which is only the 10th highest payroll in the majors.

At $105 million, you're still $57 million below the Red Sox, $67 million below the Phillies, and $97 million behind the Yankees, who, as usual, spent more than everyone, $202 million.

The Indians' payroll will go up considerably next year. They have eight or nine potential arbitration cases, all of whom will get substantial raises even if they go to an arbitration hearing and lose.

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Players not eligible for arbitration will get incremental raises, which individually aren't significant. But with so many young players on the roster, the sum of those raises will be higher than that of many teams'.

So the Indians' payroll in 2012 will go up significantly -- and it should, because (insert dramatic background music here) ... welcome to Year One of the Indians' Two-Year Window of Opportunity ("tunity, tunity, tunity").

Starting in 2012, Indians officials believe they have a two-year window to make it to the postseason, and hopefully make some noise once they get there.

This two-year window was an unspoken factor in the decision to trade Drew Pomeranz and Alex White to Colorado for Ubaldo Jimenez, a veteran pitcher who in theory is better equipped than Pomeranz and White to help the Indians win in the short term.

Non-monster payroll teams play a different game, fueled by different strategies, than do Major League Baseball's superpowers. The Big Boys play to win it all every year. The rest play for windows of opportunities.

The Indians are about to enter one of those now, and here's why:

Following the 2013 season, all of the following Indians almost certainly will be ex-Indians: Shin-Soo Choo, Asdrubal Cabrera, Grady Sizemore, Travis Hafner, Fausto Carmona, Rafael Perez, Joe Smith and Jimenez.

Sizemore, pending the health of his knees, and whether the team exercises his 2012 club option, may have already played his last game in an Indians uniform. Hafner is a free agent after next year.

Even if the Indians exercise Carmona's $7 million club option for next year, barring a dramatic turnaround in performance by a pitcher who has led his team in losses in each of the last two years, it's unlikely the Indians would pick up the two remaining club options on Carmona's contract, for 2013 and 2014.

If the Indians don't pick up Carmona's option for next year, the other two club options are voided. He'd still be Indians property and eligible for arbitration in 2012, but he'd become a free agent after the 2012 season.

Choo, Cabrera, Perez, Smith, and Jimenez all can become free agents after the 2013 season.

Two other key players, Justin Masterson and Chris Perez, would, following the 2013 season, be entering their free agent years in 2014.

In other words, the window is about to open. The Indians know it. They need to act accordingly.

For starters, hire a hit man. It doesn't have to be a payroll-rupturing free agent such as Albert Pujols or Prince Fielder, but it has to be more than what the Indians ran out there at first base (on days Carlos Santana was catching) or in the outfielder (on days Ezequiel Carrera was playing) in 2011.

Which is not to say free agency is the only way for the Indians to bulk up in 2012. Trades are also a possibility, even though the Indians nearly emptied their minor-league cupboard in the Jimenez trade. You don't always have to trade prospects.

The Indians, for example, have a surplus of relief pitchers, several of whom are coming off very good years at the major-league level, relievers whose value may be as high as they will ever be. In the right trade none of those relievers, including closer Chris Perez (Vinnie Pestano is a closer waiting to happen), should be untouchables.

Because the window is now open. Opportunity knocks for the Indians, who should be contenders in 2012 and 2013.

In molding their rosters for the next two years, it's time for them to put their money and their aggressiveness where their expectations are.